A giant tale.

There are two New York Football Giants fans who live in the Metroplex. They’re really big New York Football Giants fans.

To protect their identity, we’ll call one “JD,” and the other “AJ.”

On September 8 this year, gearing up for the Giants’ regular season opener in Arlington, they saw their favorite baseball team break a three-game skid with a comeback win over the Angels, an outstanding bullpen effort on a day when the team’s relievers were relatively well rested and the club’s ace was set to open a series the next day against Pittsburgh.

The Giants lost to Dallas, 36-31. Very disappointing for JD and AJ.

The next month was worse. The Giants lost to the Broncos, lost to the Panthers, lost to the Chiefs, lost to the Eagles, and lost to the Bears — consecutively — and JD and AJ’s favorite baseball team went 10-11 over that stretch, the final loss of which was in a one-game play-in that their favorite baseball team had to play because of how the previous 20 games had gone.

Not fun.

JD and AJ’s favorite baseball team made a shocking announcement on October 17, involving a major change in the franchise’s executive suite. JD and AJ typically liked to spend the time of the year when their favorite baseball team was finished playing thinking about ways their favorite baseball team could get better, and the shakeup in management probably distracted them a bit from that, but they also had the very welcome distraction of the Giants rattling off four straight wins, from October 21 to November 17.

There was a bye week in that stretch for the Giants, during which JD and AJ’s favorite baseball team extended the contract of its most promising young pitcher, guaranteeing four seasons and giving the club three more years of control after that.

AJ got his own job promotion around that time, too.

On November 24, with the Giants having miraculously climbed back into the playoff hunt with those four straight wins, they were getting Dallas at home, a reeling Cowboys team that had just been destroyed in New Orleans and had its own bye week afterwards to think about it.

Cowboys 24, Giants 21. Gut punch for JD and AJ. But JD and AJ’s favorite baseball team had just traded for one of the game’s premier sluggers, so at least they had that.

The Giants took care of business the next weekend against the Redskins, and JD and AJ’s favorite baseball team made an intriguing trade for a young power-hitting prospect who might be ready for the big leagues. JD and AJ were feeling good.

But then, on December 8, the Giants were blasted by the Chargers, and with it their playoff chances were mathematically extinguished, with three weeks to go. At least JD and AJ’s favorite baseball team wasn’t eliminated until after the regular season had ended.

But JD and AJ are loyal, diehard sports fans. They’re not the type to jump ship.

The Giants’ next game, the first one that doesn’t really matter, is this Sunday afternoon in New York. The Seattle Seahawks come into MetLife Stadium, hoping to pad what’s already the best record in the NFL, led by the most unlikely star quarterback in the game, Russell Wilson, who’s in his second year after being taken in the third round of the draft.

Five quarterbacks were selected before Wilson in that 2012 draft.

Two of them were Brandon Weeden and Brock Osweiler.

I’m not a Giants fan or a Seahawks fan myself, but I read a bunch of stories about Wilson yesterday, full of words like professionalism and competitiveness and makeup and work ethic and “off-the-charts character and focus.”

Off-the-charts focus.

JD and AJ hung out in Florida much of this week, and while most Giants fans have probably made other plans for Sunday, you can bet JD and AJ were thinking a little bit about football (when they weren’t thinking about their favorite baseball team and how they were going to help it win that day), and imagining how the Giants could find a way to compete with the Seahawks, to put a dent in that juggernaut team’s charge toward the playoffs, to keep fighting because that’s what you do, to maybe find a way to distract that star quarterback — to throw off that off-the-charts focus, maybe just a little.

JD and AJ have a good friend — who we’ll call “Josh” — who’s a really big 49ers fan. The Niners are chasing the Seahawks in the NFC West, and are just two games back with three to go, having just handed them only their second loss last Sunday while the Giants were in the process of being eliminated. San Francisco really needs Seattle to lose again, and Josh would really like to see that happen, and maybe if Wilson were to lose a little bit of that elite focus of his as he gets set to play the doormat Giants, that could help.

JD and AJ and Josh probably talked about that. Because they’re huge sports fans, and they don’t stop thinking about ways to help their teams win.

Not all of the above happened.

Though I have no proof of that.

Jamey Newberg

Dallas attorney Jamey Newberg has been commenting on Rangers from the big club down through the entire farm system since 1998.

Scott Lucas

Scott Lucas was born in Arlington, Texas, to Richard and Becky Lucas. He lived mostly in Arlington before moving to Austin, where he graduated from The University of Texas. Scott works for Austin Valuation Consultants, Ltd., and has published several boring articles about real estate appraisal and environmental contamination. He makes a swell margarita and refuses to run longer than ten kilometres.

Eleanor Czajka

Eleanor grew up watching the AAA Mudhens in Toledo, Ohio. A loyal Ranger fan since 1979, she works "behind the scenes" at the Newberg Report.